CUK and Gorilla Accounting

[TheBA]

I've recently signed up to them and you can state CUK as where you heard of them, among others. They're possibly basing it on that

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

CUK and Gorilla Accounting

We don't favour any posters on the forum - Alan @ Broome is a good example, not paid us a penny (no matter how hard we try and prize his wallet out of his pinstripe!) but still able to post on here and not had a thread or post deleted or amended that I am aware of. The rules are the rules for all service providers on here whether they advertise with us or not.

Not likely to either at those prices. :-)

I can attest to the fairness of the site. I nearly started a banner campaign last year but took cold feet because of the lock in period. There's been absolutely zero negative impact because of this. This forum is a good place for accountants - I guess many do ok in terms of clients and brand awareness - so it'd be easy for CUK to turn the screw on us. They haven't. I guess they see the community benefit to having professional advisers on here helping out as more important than relieving us of a few quid each month.

[MrMarkyMark]

FWIW, I've always found your posts accurate, helpful and to the point Alan.

Now, about that free accountancy

[northernladuk]

Now, about that free accountancy

Would you like it deep fried?

[MrMarkyMark]

Would you like it deep fried?

Are you telling me Alan runs a chippy, on the side, some of the biggest tax dodgers out there

[TheFaQQer]

Clearly my question has offended and upset some people. That was not my intention.

So I shall withdraw quietly and leave you to it

[administrator]

Clearly my question has offended and upset some people. That was not my intention.

So I shall withdraw quietly and leave you to it

I'm not offended - always happy to back up our position on how the forum and site are run and if there are questions raised like this then they should be answered openly.

[cojak]

Clearly my question has offended and upset some people. That was not my intention.

So I shall withdraw quietly and leave you to it

And you were wanting an unambiguous statement.

[Maslins]

I met a couple of the accounting staff from Gorilla at a FreeAgent gathering a few months back. Lovely people.
A couple of months later we got a bunch of letters through the post to our clients (where we're registered office address) saying words to the effect of "we know you're with SJD and they've just hiked their prices, why not come to us." Naturally I was slightly less impressed by this. Raised questions in my mind as to where they got their marketing data from, and also how good it was (at least one of those clients left SJD to join us a whopping 5 years earlier). I also think whilst there's nothing illegal about it, stating negative stuff about a competitor in your own marketing material leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

NLUK regularly comments that he's happy with them, as do a few others...so seems this letter is just suggesting people might want to look at CUK and would hopefully see some positive reviews of them. I guess Gorilla perhaps fairly regularly read here even if they don't post (or perhaps do under an ambiguous pseudonym...maybe NLUK?!? ). For me at least this marketing round is less questionable than the previous one.

More generally, it seems they're backed by VC funding, so I guess they've got plenty of cash, looking for rapid growth. Not much wrong with that, but might explain why their marketing is more aggressive than many other accountants, started by the owner with naff all funding, and grown slowly, and organically over many years.

Re SJD owning CUK, I recall I said that on here a year or two ago and got my post edited and a polite slapped wrist PM telling me it wasn't true. I must've read it somewhere though, so evidently I'm not the only one who somewhere along the lines had misunderstood SJD's (possibly non-existent) involvement.

Re banner ads, FWIW MVL Online dabbled a bit for a little while (never on the forum pages, but elsewhere on the site). Didn't seem to get much in way of clicks per £££ so we dropped it. I certainly didn't feel I was treated better whilst the adverts were in place than before/since.

[Fred Bloggs]

I'm guessing many or most here run ad blockers any way. Certainly, I do.